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Archbishop Wenski Speaks Up for Catholic Conscience (4619)

'The president's promises are not being kept,' Miami archbishop says.

MIAMI (EWTN News)—President Barack Obama has not kept his promises about conscience protections for abortion opponents, and those who trusted him to exclude abortion from the health-care bill seem to “have been played,” Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami said.

“His administration is running roughshod over conscience-protection provisions’ long part of the law that find their justification in the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion, a foundational human right,” the archbishop wrote in a Dec. 2 essay in the Miami Herald.

“It is one thing for an administration to support and promote an agenda; it is quite another to force those who disagree with it to violate their moral and religious principles.”

The archbishop noted President Obama’s 2009 commencement address at the University of Notre Dame, where he promised to “honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion” and to provide “sensible” protections for those who do not want to be involved.

“Fast-forward to late 2011, and the record shows that the president’s promises are not being kept,” the archbishop said. He added that the president seems to have deceived pro-life Catholics like former Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak, Catholic Health Association head, Sister Carol Keehan, and Notre Dame’s leadership.

“The long line of evidence is disturbing,” he said.

Archbishop Wenski cited the administration’s 2009 reversal of previous regulations on federal conscience laws. He noted that the health-care bill of 2010 omitted traditional protections for conscience rights and included language that would “subjugate” conscience rights to federal and state “emergency” service laws.

“In other words, any abortion declared an ‘emergency’ (broadly defined) by a government requires a health-care provider’s full cooperation, regardless of his or her views on the matter,” Archbishop Wenski warned.

He also objected to the Department of Health and Human Services rule announced on Aug. 1 that requires almost all health plans, including those provided by Catholic organizations, to cover sterilization and contraception, including abortifacient drugs.

“HHS seemingly wants to regard fertility as a disease — and elective abortion subsidized by the taxpayer as health care.”

The archbishop lamented federal contracts’ and grants’ new requirements that grantees help provide all legally permissible family-planning and obstetric/gynecological services. Many U.S. State Department AIDS program grants now require integration with family planning and “reproductive health” services, which ignores conscience clauses in the congressional authorizing statute.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had been receiving a grant to help human-trafficking victims, but this grant was discontinued after the conference said it could not meet the new requirements and pointed out that the requirement violates existing federal conscience laws.

“Catholic social and health-care providers — the largest private network in the nation — are at risk of being left out of all federal programs, despite their well-earned reputation for providing superlative service to the American public.”

“In effect, the Obama administration is telling these Catholic providers to surrender their conscience rights and their Catholic ethos or shut their doors,” Archbishop Wenski charged.

The archbishop urged Americans and elected officials from both parties to be concerned with these developments, warning that the violation of religious and conscience rights puts everyone’s rights in jeopardy.

Comments

I’m with you on this….one caveat (and you did touch on it), the government promised they would respect and observe religious objections, and (wrongly, as you and I stated) the USCCB believed it.

I highly doubt these organisations will fail…I believe and pray that they will flourish without the shackles of the tyrant on them. Only time will tell.

Posted by Dr. Carolyn on Wednesday, Dec 7, 2011 2:27 PM (EDT):

Thank you Bishop Wenski. God bless you for your courage to speak out and say it like it really is.

And now, we know.

“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”

Posted by Jon Merrill on Wednesday, Dec 7, 2011 1:56 PM (EDT):

Surrendering, or Reclaiming, a “Catholic Ethos”? :

“Catholic social and health-care providers — the largest private network in the nation — are at risk of being left out of all federal programs, despite their well-earned reputation for providing superlative service to the American public.”

“In effect, the Obama administration is telling these Catholic providers to surrender their conscience rights and their Catholic ethos or shut their doors,” Archbishop Wenski charged.

“…or shut their doors”?

This is another unwitting admission by an American Catholic prelate that, without federal government support there is, in the mind of the American hierarchy, no organized Catholic charity; that, having become no more than a secular-government contractor, a ward of the anti-Catholic State, Catholic charity will simply disappear without the coerced and coercive subsidies provided by that State – provided, and accepted, by the way, in glaring contradiction to traditional Catholic teaching on subsidiarity; that the Catholic people themselves, with that wonderful “Catholic ethos” of theirs, are nevertheless pathetically incapable of taking care of themselves and others, voluntarily, with their own resources.

Archbishop Wenski is in error when he says that Catholic providers are being asked, unreasonably, to “surrender their conscience rights.” They are instead being asked, very reasonably, simply to surrender their taxpayer-provided subsidies if they insist on using that money in ways that contradict the de-facto religion of the State, or at least, of the Obama administration, which came to power, after all, in free and fair elections, and which, as a result, can very defensibly claim to better represent the moral thinking of the American taxpayer, such as it is, than does the Catholic Church. The taxpayers and the Obama administration have consciences too, and they are obliged – as the Catholic Church herself has always taught – to act in accordance with those consciences, however objectively defective they might be. Why should the taxpayer and the Obama administration have to provide money to a “Catholic” provider whom they believe to be behaving in a morally misguided way? The administration is not “shutting down” the Catholic agency; it is quite reasonably – and quite morally – declining to provide it financial support. (If the “Catholic” provider has over time become fatally dependent on government administrations, whose fault is that?)

And, about the supposed “Catholic ethos” of what Archbishop Wenski calls a “private” network of “Catholic social and health-care providers,” in truth a network of secularized, nominally-Catholic GSEs (“government-sponsored enterprises”):

Weren’t we just the other day told very explicitly by Bishop Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois that it was that very government money – the money which Archbishop Wenski claims Catholic charity can literally not live without – which had prevented his diocesan service organizations from manifesting a true Catholic ethos? Didn’t the Illinois bishop say that, being “less dependent on government funding,” his “Catholic Charities would be able to focus on being more Catholic and more charitable”? Two different episcopal understandings here, apparently, of the effect of government funding on “Catholic ethos.” If Bishop Paprocki is right – and I believe that he unquestionably is – then, far from asking Catholic providers to “surrender their Catholic ethos,” the Obama administration is actually suggesting that they reclaim it.

Pax and regards, Jon Merrill

Jon Merrill is the founder of Militia Caritatis Dei, a traditionally orthodox, catholically Catholic international charity which conspicuously rejects government funding.

Posted by JMJ on Wednesday, Dec 7, 2011 1:00 PM (EDT):

Obamanism must be stopped while we still have a chance. Don’t count on voting him out next year as he will be back out of our country and into voodoo land (Hawaii) to brush up on his black magic (the worst mistake by President Ike). Go on to a non-Catholic link & you will be amazed at just how much hate is out there against us God-fearing Americans. The only good thing about this dictator is that he is just now starting to wake up the Bishops from their 50 year nap. Obama does not have a consensus so why would he be concerned about the group that he hates so much: the Christian community, Catholics & non-catholics. As long as he has the so-called “catholic” democrats in line, along with the American “catholics”, he is happy as a pig in his pig pen. Let us not hate the man, but we surely can hate what he is doing to our unborn babies, our lives, our country that God so richly blessed us with (and nothing to do with Obama’s luck) as he is getting ready to take over the world as it’s leader. +JMJ+

Posted by john grant on Wednesday, Dec 7, 2011 12:55 PM (EDT):

Anyone who has ever believed anything Obama has said has zero credibility.

With all due respect, this was the plan by the government all along, and the USCCB fell for it, hook, line and sinker.

Note to all people of faith: NEVER trust the government. They are not your friend!!!

Posted by Lurker on Wednesday, Dec 7, 2011 11:45 AM (EDT):

Two things.

First, Bart Stupak wasn’t tricked. He knew full well what he was doing.

Second, if many bishops would stop viewing the Democrat party as the party of social justice and charity (both are distorted by the party), they may be able to see the Democrat politicians for what they are, lying pro-abortion, pro-gay-“marriage” snakes who will do anything to anyone to impose an agenda.

The bishops need to wake up, including my own who is a registered Democrat.

Posted by Kris on Wednesday, Dec 7, 2011 3:44 AM (EDT):

I hate to be a nudge, but truly anyone with a sense of logic would have seen this coming. President Obama has been forcoming on so many issues and they all lead to one frame of mind, I will obtain my agenda, even if it means using sly tactics. Unfortunatly the bishops blinded themselves to this reality, hoping it might not be. Yes, they got played.

Posted by Magdalene on Wednesday, Dec 7, 2011 12:20 AM (EDT):

And someone is surprised? Many of us saw this coming. It is late in the say to be protesting now.

Posted by Brian Murphy on Tuesday, Dec 6, 2011 6:29 PM (EDT):

Well this seems awful and Mr President should not be allowed to do this and force anti-abortionist to assist at abortions under threat of losing their jobs; especially as Mr Obama gave a pre election promise not to allow this. The Catholic hierarchy must do their job and formally protest to the U.S. president and do whatever they can to stop forcing persons to assist at abortions. The Cardinals and bishops should formally protest to the U.S. government and get public opinion onside in the land of the free. World wide coverage of all this will help and a formal complaint to the Pope etc. At least try to do something and stand up to this evil practise of abortion.

Posted by L J Klug on Tuesday, Dec 6, 2011 4:41 PM (EDT):

Thank you Archbishop Wenski, we need more clergy to speak out on this matter as well as lay catholics. We can’t sit idly by while this adminstration divides and conquers.

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